Capacitive MEMS microphone elements of the type discussed here are known from the related art. The microphone structure generally includes a sound pressure-sensitive diaphragm and one fixed acoustically permeable counter-element. These two components of the microphone structure are used as carrier elements for the electrodes of a microphone capacitor system. The sound pressure-related deflections of the diaphragm result in a change in distance between the diaphragm electrode and the counter-electrode on the fixed counter-element and consequently a change in the capacitance of the microphone capacitor system, which may be detected simply as a voltage change. The capacitive MEMS microphone elements known from the related art generally have a flat frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz and are accordingly used exclusively for detecting acoustic signals.
An MEMS microphone element including a capacitor system for signal detection is described in WO 2010/119168 A1, one of its electrode sides including multiple electrode segments which are electrically isolated from one another. Together with the electrode or electrodes of the other electrode side, these electrode segments form partial capacitances which are independent from one another. According to WO 2010/119168 A1, these partial capacitances are used for adapting the microphone sensitivity to different signal levels, i.e., sound volume levels, of the acoustic signal. For that purpose, the output signal is formed as a sum of the partial capacitances, the number of added partial capacitances being selected as a function of the particular sound volume level. The lower the sound volume level, the greater is the number of added partial capacitances. Consequently, the number of partial capacitances determines the number of the sound volume ranges which may be differentiated.